


Oidhche Shamhna

by FaerieChild



Category: Outlander & Related Fandoms, Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-05
Updated: 2020-11-05
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:47:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27405274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FaerieChild/pseuds/FaerieChild
Summary: In the Celtic Scottish tradition, Oidhche Shamhna, or Hallowe’en in English, is the night where the veil between our world and the spirit world is at its weakest. Strong-willed spirits can even break the veil and walk the earth. Set in 20th century Boston, this is a (slightly angsty) canon-consistent story written for fun at this time of year.
Relationships: Claire Beauchamp/Jamie Fraser
Comments: 18
Kudos: 47





	Oidhche Shamhna

Oidhche Shamhna

He did it every year on Oidhche Shamhna. It was the only night of the year when the veil was weak enough to cross. And always he had to fight off the others, the malevolent spirits, the evilness and darkness within them a living thing that made Jamie’s spirit flinch but he was determined to get through, to get to her.

It was surely nothing to what Claire’s own journey through the stones had been so many years before.

Claire didn’t like him going. ‘I’m right here,’ she would tell him.

‘I need to know that she’s ok.’

‘What if you can’t get back?’

‘I will always find you, Sassenach,’ Jamie promised and he would leave his soul mate with a smile as he joined the other spirits in their annual pilgrimage to cross the veil.

Scotland was easy. Jamie felt such a pull the place the first few times he tried this he had gone there accidentally. He hadn’t meant to end up in 1945 but something pulled him there.

It hadn’t taken long to figure what.

Eventually he had gotten the knack of finding Boston.

The world was different now, in this time. Faster. Busier. All the things Claire had told him of when she returned to him after their long parting so many years before. The artificial lights. The roads and pavements paved with a strange solid blackness.

Children everywhere. They called it ‘trick or treating’ here. Back in Scotland the bairns disguised themselves to blend in with the evil spirits. These ones dressed up for fun - no guard at all.

Small eyes sometimes spotted him, their eyes going wide as Jamie lurked in shadows, waiting. The children saw more, as if they lived on a different plane. Sometimes Jamie smiled or nodded back. Enough to keep the myths alive. Mystified parents tugging their children along. Most adults didn’t like to tune in to those things they couldn’t see - or wouldn’t.

Things like Jamie.

He travelled swift, as fleet of foot as he had been at twenty-five through shadows and darkness and trick-or-treaters to the street where they all lived.

His family.

A wiser spirit might wait til later, if they wanted the quietest time to do their work. But Jamie wasn’t here for such nefarious deeds as those he crossed with.

His Claire was coming down the steps, their lass in hand. Dressed up as a particularly small and cute white-witch. ‘The white witches are the good witches, Mom,’ Brìanna told her mother, holding fast to her hand.

The lass’s head looked up and Jamie shrunk back into the shadow of the tree across the road. Their girl’s warm eyes fixed to the spot where Jamie stood.

‘Mom?’

‘What is it, Bree?’

Claire looking at their daughter oddly and then at the spot across the road where she was staring. Nothing there.

‘I thought I saw someone.’

Nothing but the familiar tree in the midst of fall. And yet there was a tingle up her spine and a dryness to her throat.

Claire shook herself.

Jamie was gone. And gone for years. And the hurt that never died lived on and twisted deeper year by year.

It didn’t help to linger.

Claire’s eyes glanced up, hitting an impenetrable black spot in the shadows. A sixth sense tingling, her eyes seeing nothing in the night. For only a moment, wallowing in the feeling, the sense, the hope of his presence...

...Then spoke some sense into herself. What was it Mrs Baird had warned of chasing ghosts?

Their daughter was alive and he was dead. Claire took a moment to quell the throbbing of her heart and racing pulse. _‘Sorcha...’_ She could almost hear him, through the centuries. The way the vowels whispered round his mouth like wind in the trees of the hills by Lallybroch.

Brìanna stared at her mother, wondering what was wrong prompting Claire to smile assuringly and tug her daughter’s hand. ‘Come on, we’ll miss the candy.’

Across the street an old ghost in a shadow gripped his broadsword and his plaid and stepped forth to watch them amble down the street.

‘Look back,’ He thought. ‘Look back, look back.’ Jamie watched a slight pause in her movement, a certain way Claire glanced and turned her head but stopped herself.

‘Look back, my love. Just once.’

Claire’s skin tingled with sensation, a presence at her neck, but ghosts weren’t real. And Brìanna was.

And there was trick-or-treating to be done.


End file.
